


Even Now

by tlcroft



Category: Law & Order
Genre: M/M, Post Episode 4 Season 19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 22:15:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17150057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tlcroft/pseuds/tlcroft
Summary: Only Jack knew why this case bothered Mike so much.





	Even Now

It was late when JackMcCoy finally came to Mike Cutter's office to apologize. Knowing Mike's past, he should have known he would react badly to the parents' request to have their barely adolescent daughter sterilized. 

Tapping lightly so he wouldn't startle his young love, Jack opened the door slowly, preparing to leave if Mike wanted to pick a fight. Cutter, however, was leaning against the window, slow tears staining his too pale cheeks. "Why do they have to mutilate us, Jack?" he asked, his voice hoarse from crying. "Why can't they just let us be who we are?"

"They're parents, Mike," McCoy answered, taking the too slender man in his arms. "They only want what's best for you."

"Or what's best for them," Mike answered bitterly, resting his aching head against his lover's shoulder. "They wanted a son, not someone who was both son and daughter. They wanted a normal child, not a freak like me!"

Jack just held him, letting his lover cry. Mike had been born intersex, his dual gender mostly theoretical until puberty when his menses started and his parents took him to a specialist who recommended gender reassignment surgery. Mike was just young enough not to understand why he was going to the hospital, what the doctors intended to do to him. When Mike woke up after surgery, he was in pain, the delicate crease between his legs burning. When he complained, the doctors and nurses had dismissed it, telling him that he would be fine after he healed. Except Mike never really was.

The crease between his penis and scrotum was gone, sewn shut, the tender tissues scarred. Even now, his mutilated labia often burned, only warm compresses and gentle massage easing his torment. And as bad as his fear and anger and bewilderment was then, it had only gotten worse when, as a college student, he learned that they had taken his ovaries and uterus as well.

None of it could be reversed. His vagina had been sewn shut from his labia to his excised cervix, the delicate tissues deliberately abraded so they would grow together as he healed. And now there was too much scarring for even the best doctors to build a vagina for him though several had tried. Small wonder this case brought up so many painful memories for him; that Mike had been angry at what had been planned for that little girl.

"Please take me home, Jack," he whispered, not wanting to cope with the stares of collegues who were working late. He just wanted the peace he had found in Jack's arms.

Jack gently wrapped his young love in his coat, quietly coaxing him out to the street where he hailed a cab to take them to his townhouse where Mike could cry privately for what might have been.

**Author's Note:**

> This is obviously AU; a bit of my own headcanon of Mike Cutter's life.


End file.
